Efficient organization of devices requiring electrical power within an office, commercial, industrial or residential environment has been a historical problem. Such devices include lamps, typewriters, computers, printers, complex telephone stations, video displays, and the like. The primary problems associated with the efficient organization and use of such devices relate to the abundance of wiring arrays and the positioning of the energy requiring devices within the environment.
With increased use of personal computers in the office environment, many furniture articles have been modified to accommodate the proliferation of electrical cables associated with these computers. The task of wire management has become more troublesome, yet more essential. Many furniture systems have been developed that provide some means for storing or containing the various cables and wires associated with the computer system, as well as with other electrical equipment that may be supported by an article of furniture such as a desk.
A somewhat more of a unique problem arises in the case of ganged or interconnected furniture. For example, in conference and training room settings, a number of tables can be connected or ganged together in a particular arrangement. In a training setting, several trainees may be seated around an array of tables, each trainee having his or her own computer for performing various training tasks. Similarly, in a conference room setting, the attendees may likewise require their own computer monitors at their particular locations at the table arrangement.
With this type of ganged furniture, problems arise as to how to provide electrical power to each of the computers throughout the length of the connected furniture. One approach is to provide each workstation or conference table location with an electrical cable connected directly to an outlet. However, in many conference or training rooms, there are not enough wall outlets to accommodate the number of participants. A further option that has been pursued is the utilization of a series of power strips. Such strips include multiple electrical outlets connected to single power cord. The power cord, in turn, is plugged into a wall socket. A substantive approach is advantageous in reducing the necessary number of wall plug-ins. That is, a typical power strip may have four to eight electrical sockets. However, even with such a configuration, and in a conference room setting where there are a dozen or more participants, several power strips would be required. The number of power strips may still exceed in the number of available wall outlets. Still further, even if there are a sufficient number of wall outlets, the use of multiple power strips can still lead to a tangled mass of electrical cables.
Unfortunately, some users may be tempted to improperly “daisy-chain” a set of power strips together. That is, each power strip can be connected to a prior power strip, with is ultimately connected to a single wall socket. Such use of a power strip is often in violation of certain regulatory standards, as well as the recommendations of the manufactures of power strips. Notwithstanding the safety hazards, the daisy-chaining of power strips still presents problems in wire management.